Sentence Length

[J D Foster]

Couldn't find a thread on this. Sorry if it's been done please delete me.

I got a word macro that highlights long sentences, and first time I ran it my whole document was highlighted. Since then I've been trying to shorten my sentences. Having said that, I just started reading a book which is pure poetry it is so well written and I noticed the author uses really long sentences.

I was just wondering what people thought of sentence length and how much work you put into shortening your sentences?

I read (or should that be struggled through?) a tonne of Dickens when I was younger, so I'm really quite at home with long sentences. Possibly the long sentence is a bit antiquated now?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I think it's about finding a balance. I write short sentences. I especially write them when I want pace.

Sometimes, though, when my character is musing and thinking, I might write long sentences - they slow the flow a little and let me link ideas: but they need to be well punctuated. (And that colon was terrible punctuation, but hopefully you get the idea.)

If all our sentences are short, it can seem too staccatto. If too long, it slows things dreadfully. But keeping up a good rhythm, with a natural mix is probably what to aim for.

 

[Droflet]

Yeah, what Jo said.

 

[Ursa major]

As JoZ says, writers should be both giving the readers some variety and using the way they write to reinforce** what the words are delivering (helping to set the appropriate mood, as it were). But the most important things should be 1) that the writer knows what their writing is delivering and knows why it does, so they can have control of it; 2) that the sentences, of whatever length, make sense***.


** - Or, I suppose, to undermine the message of the words, making the reader uneasy, wondering what's really going on. (But to do this, I would assume that the writer needs the reader to be sure that when this happens, it isn't just sloppy writing.)

*** - Except where they are supposed to not make much sense, obviously....

 

[LittleStar]

I think there was a thread a couple of months ago about short, staccato sentences... Or was that to do with the openings of books? Might be worth looking into to follow the trains of thought in the thread.

I have been caught numerous times by my partner writing long sentences. I don't think they're badly punctuated, not run-ons etc, but just with an excess (so she says) of commas. I, like Jo's longer example, find myself naturally putting in commas into my sentences, where my partner would rearrange the whole sentence to remove a couple of them. And truthfully it probably makes it easier to read and snappier, more to the point, and maybe I can learn to edit them myself (without having them pointed out first), but naturally I write long... And use plenty of semi-colons.

Jo is of course right about the sentence length and pacing link; you want to pick and choose when to use snappy sentences and when longer ponderous ones will have more effect.

And as Im awful at editing my own stuff for these things, I'm now wondering whether or not I do this at all, or are they all just mammoths sentences

 

[TitaniumTi]

I'm reading Heartstone, by C.J. Sansom. I thought this book had longer sentences than many books I've read recently but, on checking, I found that sentence length varies with, generally, one sentence = one idea. As some ideas are intricate, some sentences are also. For example: "We had talked of how the King had wasted the riches he had gained from the monasteries, spending them on palaces and display, doing nothing to replace the limited help the monks had given the poor."

These intricate sentences slow the pace of the story, but provide a credible voice for the protagonist/narrator, who is a barrister in Henry VIII's London.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I got a word macro that highlights long sentences

I'd ditch it. The length isn't important, but the content, rhythm and flow, as mentioned above. Punctuation is more important to have right and I've not found any wp good at that, especially dialogue / speech tags etc.

Similarly paragraph size.

Sometime reading it out loud can help you decide. Or listen to what your editor or proof reader thinks. No wordprocessor tool is a substitute for a human. Even spelunking chequers can be tricky. MS Word (and Firefox) offering grapheme for graphene. Both are real words, but today graphene is more common in texts.
Often grammar checkers are orientated to one narrow view of business or technical writing.

 

[Ursa major]

Sometime reading it out loud can help you decide.

This.

(And it's a good way of finding errors that might otherwise go unnoticed -- by the writer -- when reading silently.)

 

[Ray McCarthy]

finding errors that might otherwise go unnoticed

Rats, I made some in the post!
I'm rubbish at proof reading. Everyone needs a separate person to at least proof read even if they are competent at editing their own work.

 

[J D Foster]

Wow, thanks everyone for your replies, I'm bowled over by helpful and supportive everyone is here.

I think it's about finding a balance. I write short sentences. I especially write them when I want pace.

Sometimes, though, when my character is musing and thinking, I might write long sentences - they slow the flow a little and let me link ideas: but they need to be well punctuated. (And that colon was terrible punctuation, but hopefully you get the idea.)

Thanks Jo, Once more I realise there is far more to writing than I appreciated. It never occurred to me that you could swap short and long out to change the pace according to the level of action in the story at the time... I'm so out of my depth.

and knows why it does, so they can have control of it

If I achieve this it is by fluke and not design

I have been caught numerous times by my partner writing long sentences. I don't think they're badly punctuated, not run-ons etc, but just with an excess (so she says) of commas.

First thing I had proofed came back with lots of commas added and lots of commas converted to full stops.

"We had talked of how the King had wasted the riches he had gained from the monasteries, spending them on palaces and display, doing nothing to replace the limited help the monks had given the poor."

See, now that is probably the sort of length that a lot of my sentences were (with longer ones too) It feels like a natural amount of information I can process as a reader before my brain gets full

These intricate sentences slow the pace of the story, but provide a credible voice for the protagonist/narrator, who is a barrister in Henry VIII's London.

This is also a great point, I hadn't really thought of. One of my wips at the moment has a learned priest who tends to talk in quite long and flowery terms, so longer sentences would make sense for him.

I'd ditch it. The length isn't important, but the content, rhythm and flow, as mentioned above. Punctuation is more important to have right and I've not found any wp good at that, especially dialogue / speech tags etc.

I'm having to run it through as much software as I can as I'm running out of willing family proof readers. Desperately saving up my pennies to send one of my stories to a professional. I take your point though, I've changed somethings that Software has "complained" about. Then in a subsequent re-read put it back to the way it was before because it sounded better the way it was before.

This.

(And it's a good way of finding errors that might otherwise go unnoticed -- by the writer -- when reading silently.)

I've just started doing this on one of my wips, and you're quite right about picking up errors. It also changed one of my characters from a Southern American (in my head) to Scottish, and resulted in my re-writting much of his dialogue as it no longer matched the sound in my head.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

'm having to run it through as much software as I can as I'm running out of willing family proof readers. Desperately saving up my pennies to send one of my stories to a professional. I take your point though, I've changed somethings that Software has "complained" about. Then in a subsequent re-read put it back to the way it was before because it sounded better the way it was before.

We've still to see any in crits? So there's a whole new set of eyes waiting. Seriously, leave professional editing until you're more confidant in this sort of thing. It's good to embed the writing skills first, if you can, and you'll get more bang for your buck if they're not distracted by things like sentence structure. The crits board is a great place to start and, if you're new to it, let us know and we'll be (reasonably) gentle.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I'm running out of willing family proof readers

Try more distant cousins?
Only hand out a later version you have edited a lot. People rarely want to read it more than once, so also only give each version to one reader unless you have someone that's unemployed or retired and very keen to help.

I still don't have any YA / teen proof readers.

Seriously, leave professional editing until you're more confidant in this sort of thing. ... The crits board is a great place to start

Yes it's very useful.

 

[tinkerdan]

I wanted to address the notion that all your sentences are long and your desire to fix that, with a caution; because what I did in my first book was the knee jerk reaction to that and ended up with too many short sentences that were as jarring as water torture. You have to have a balance.
In some cases you can leave most of your long sentences while finding the sweet spot, where the reader needs to take a breath, and you can insert or shorten a sentence. Give your reader a reprieve.

But punctuation is a key because I recently read something that was, I think, deliberately overdoing long sentences with poor punctuation so that the reader could see that that leads to ambiguity in the images. Some readers get confused. Others lost. Overall the entire paragraph or page can alienate the reader or leave them scratching their head or worse: they might just leave the book in the trash.

As has been said, it's all about pace and rhythm and clarity.

PS. I love long sentence when they are done well and I love them by the paragraph or page or however long you can sustain that by writing well.

 

[J D Foster]

We've still to see any in crits? So there's a whole new set of eyes waiting. Seriously, leave professional editing until you're more confidant in this sort of thing. It's good to embed the writing skills first, if you can, and you'll get more bang for your buck if they're not distracted by things like sentence structure. The crits board is a great place to start and, if you're new to it, let us know and we'll be (reasonably) gentle.

Yikes... I've had a look around in there. I didn't think of putting anything in that forum, I feel like I'm take, take, take here as it is I need to see if I can get guts up for that

Try more distant cousins?
Only hand out a later version you have edited a lot. People rarely want to read it more than once, so also only give each version to one reader unless you have someone that's unemployed or retired and very keen to help..

I see that. I told my friend last night I wanted to re-send her one she has looked over twice and groaned and rolled her eyes

I wanted to address the notion that all your sentences are long and your desire to fix that, with a caution; because what I did in my first book was the knee jerk reaction to that and ended up with too many short sentences that were as jarring as water torture. You have to have a balance.
In some cases you can leave most of your long sentences while finding the sweet spot, where the reader needs to take a breath, and you can insert or shorten a sentence. Give your reader a reprieve.

This is exactly what I'm worried about. It seems natural to me that there would be long and short, and I feel bad shortening some of them, like I'm forcing something that shouldn't be.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

No one can ever more from crits than I did in my early days here - and now I give back. It'll come around, don't worry.

 

[Vertigo]

PS. I love long sentence when they are done well and I love them by the paragraph or page or however long you can sustain that by writing well.

If it's well done the reader hardly notices. Roberto Bolano is brilliant at this; one of his sentences spanned something like 8 pages and I didn't even notice until I came to the end. It was a description of a dream and the very lack of full stop pauses worked really well at conveying that continuous stream of thought that tends to characterise dreams.

 

[Zoe Mackay]

I think the thing about rhythm is really important. Even in relatively short pieces of writing. Sentences without sub-clauses become wearing quickly.

Similarly repeatedly using the same sentence structure, with the same rhythm, even if that structure is more complex can be a subconscious turn-off for readers. Everybody has writing habits they fall into, little grammatical tics, that at their best are part of the author's style but become problematic if over-used. It is definitely worth thinking about, or analysing when editing, why you are using a particular structure and what effect you intend to get from it.

 

[Vertigo]

How not to do it;

As I got closer I saw that many of its wooden panels were missing. Light splintered through the structure. The wood itself was weather-worn and eaten away here and there. Part of its roof was missing and it no longer had a door, only an entrance lined with eaten pieces of a doorframe. One good storm would probably raze it to the ground completely. In fact, it looked as if it would really only need one good shove.

This is not an 'action' sequence (it begins earlier with "I drifted away from the river and found myself in a field"). The entire book seemed to be written with these short staccato sentences and, after confirming that the whole book was indeed written this way, I gave up on it.

 

[J D Foster]

No one can ever more from crits than I did in my early days here - and now I give back. It'll come around, don't worry.

will seriously think about it

one of his sentences spanned something like 8 pages and I didn't even notice until I came to the end .

That's crazy intense.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

one of his sentences spanned something like 8 pages

That sounds amazing! Is it a record for modern writing (for thousands of years people didn't bother much with punctuation, hence people in ancient Rome wouldn't read something out loud, cold. They'd practice it privately to see how to phrase/ pause it etc.)